Baking Soda Could Save the World
Not to be confused with a much more star-studded announcement concerning the climate today, a company in the U.S. is attempting to remove carbon dioxide emissions from a coal-fired power plant by creating baking soda.
Simply pumping the CO2 through a sodium hydroxide solution at the right temperature gives the folks at Skymine a pure, stable, food-grade sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) precipitate. That sodium bicarbonate's carbonates come from the carbon dioxide that we so frequently bemoan as the world's largest contributor to global warming.
The Skymine process, pioneered by Skyonic, is really very simple. The big problem with it, in my eyes, is that sodium hydroxide doesn't just bubble out of the ground anywhere. Actually, that's a really good thing, because that probably wouldn't be very good for the world's water supplies.
A pilot version of the process is already underway. And there is a lot of good news. All of the byproducts in the creation of sodium hydroxide (hydrogen and chlorine) can be sold commercially. And the baking soda (which is currently mined) would fill the world's markets pretty quickly, reducing the need for those mines.
Apparently the system would cost roughly as much as the $400M scrubbers that power plants already have on them...but would scrub both toxics and 80% of their carbon dioxide.
I still don't feel like they could find enough sodium hydroxide in the world to make this possible, but I could be wrong. And I hope I'm wrong, because this could be a fantastic breakthrough.
Via CNet